Subject: Chinese Cucumber Root Is Studied As an AIDS Drug 
Date: Published: 4/13/89 (72 lines)
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Technology:  
    Chinese Cucumber
    Root Is Studied
    As an AIDS Drug
    ----   
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    SAN FRANCISCO -- The root of a Chinese cucumber, used in
 China to induce abortion and treat cancer, appears to kill
 AIDS-infected cells in laboratory tests.
    A drug made from the root also blocks the virus in two
 kinds of immune-system cells in the test tube, said
 scientists at the University of California, San Francisco,
 and Genelabs Inc. of Redwood City, Calif.  The drug inhibits
 AIDS-virus production in infected white blood cells called
 T-cells, and perhaps more importantly, kills chronically
 infected macrophages, the scavenger cells which form a
 crucial reservoir of the AIDS virus in the body.
    The researchers warned, however, that the drug hasn't yet
 been tested in patients with acquired immune deficiency
 syndrome.
    The drug, called GLQ223, is a highly purified form of the
 plant protein trichosanthin.  The scientists acknowledged that
 they don't know why the compound appears to work in the test
 tube.  But one theory is that it inactivates ribosomes, small
 protein factories within cells, causing cell death and
 halting spread of infection.  The report, co-authored by UCSF,
 Genelabs and Chinese University of Hong Kong, appears in this
 week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
 Sciences.
    UCSF and Genelabs received a patent on the drug, and the
 team said it has applied to the Food and Drug Administration
 for investigational new drug status to begin human clinical
 tests of the drug at San Francisco General Hospital.  However,
 the team accompanied its report with a big dose of caution.
    "These results apply solely to laboratory studies," said
 Michael McGrath, a researcher at UCSF and principal co-author
 of the report with Genelabs' Jeffrey D. Lifson.  They warned
 AIDS patients against attempting to inject any crude plant
 extracts, branding such self-experimentation as "dangerous,
 even lethal."
    GLQ223 has undergone animal testing for toxicity, but not
 for effectiveness against the AIDS virus.  So far, hopes for
 human use are pinned largely on a study of human blood
 samples from eight infected patients, showing that their
 macrophage cells stopped producing virus after treatment with
 the drug.  By contrast, the report noted, chronically infected
 macrophages aren't affected by the anti-AIDS drug AZT. 
    Outside scientists treated the news with interested
 skepticism.  "It's another agent which {in the test tube}
 inhibits" the AIDS virus, said Jerome Groopman, an AIDS
 researcher at New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston.  "But
 you have to be careful in extrapolating from test-tube
 results any breakthrough for AIDS.  "
    The UCSF-Genelabs team itself emphasized that it will take
 extensive clinical studies to determine the drug's safety and
 effectiveness in AIDS patients.
    The American Foundation for AIDS Research issued a
 statement saying it believes GLQ223 to be "potentially very
 promising," but warning AIDS patients not to take the
 unrefined Chinese cucumber extract, which can result in blood
 clot, seizure or stroke.

[This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the 
personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the 
hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering 
from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]